Vikenty Veresaev

VERESAEV, V., pseudonym of Vikenty Vikentyevich Smidovich, writer of fiction, publicist, physician. Born in 1867 in Tula. In 1888, he graduated from the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg University, and in 1894 from the Faculty of Medicine of Yuryev University. In 1892, while still a student, he was in charge of a cholera barrack at a mine near Yuzovka. From 1894, he served as a physician at the Botkin Hospital in St. Petersburg; he joined the revolutionary Marxist youth and was exiled (in 1901). He participated in the Russo-Japanese War as a military physician; during the imperialist war, he was in charge of a military-sanitary detachment of the Moscow railway junction. Since 1885, V. has been engaged in literary activity. Specialized medical works occupy an insignificant place among his numerous literary works, mainly fiction ("Without a Path", "At the Turn", "In a Dead End", and many others), literary criticism ("Living Life", "Pushkin in Life", and others), translations from German and Greek poets, and publicist works. The latter group includes "The Memoirs of a Physician", which was published in 1901 in the journal "Mir Bozhy" ("God's World"), and subsequently went through 11 editions from 1903 to 1927. In this book, V. touches upon the most diverse questions of medical ethics and practice (up to questions about vivisection, the right to perform autopsies, etc.), describing a number of conflicts associated with the medical profession, and vividly depicting the experiences of a beginning attending physician, sometimes driving him to despair by the realization of his own helplessness. V.'s book caused extensive controversy in the Russian and foreign press; V. was accused of discrediting the physician before patients and of excessive pessimism. However, in "The Memoirs of a Physician" one also encounters quite a few optimistic pages, imbued with a clear realization that physicians are "only a small part of one huge, inseparable whole," and emphasizing the social role of the physician: "A physician—if he is a physician, and not a bureaucrat of medical affairs—must first of all fight for the elimination of those conditions which make his activity meaningless and fruitless; he must be a public figure in the broadest sense of the word." V. actively participated and continues to participate in literary and public life, holding responsible elected positions in literary organizations.